Wine Time

Rully (roo-ee)

Now we have left the Saone river and are on the Canal du Centre we are heading for the hills, so to speak. Here, the hills are the Côte du Chalonnais which is the southern section of the famed Côte d’Or of Burgundy.  In other words – premier wine country. There is a narrow strip of land a few kilometres wide that is the grape growing area and we are crossing it at right angles so the opportunities for visiting the good  “caves” are short. We are also limited how close we can get with the boat but the canal does go close to the village of Rully whose red and white wines we have tried and liked, so we moored here for two nights. Turns out Rully is also the center of manufacture of the “Cremant de Bourgogne” which is Burgundy’s answer to that other bubbly drink who’s name they can’t use, and one of Terry’s favourite tipples. The village is 2km from the canal and involved a bike ride so we thought we would take the dogs, have lunch, do some wine tasting and return later in the day.

The day was grey and cool with black clouds threatening rain.  Fortunately they never mustered enough energy to deliver more than a sprinkle and we set off with our little road warriors in their wicker baskets on our clown bikes.

Rully turned out to be a charming village with fine old houses and about 30 wine “caves”, but only one grocery store, no bank and two restaurants, both of which closed on Wednesdays.  Of course today is Wednesday! So our  lunch was a pizza from the bakery under the shelter of the canopy of the (closed) restaurant. No big deal.  While Terry bought food for our evening meal in the grocery before it, too closed for lunch I took the road warriors back to the cozy boat and returned to continue our explorations without them.

We tried a couple of Cremant houses and found one we liked and bought eight bottles. “Would it be possible to deliver to the boat?”, “But of course!”

So now for some Rully Red and we only had to go to one place.  In Chalon sur Saone we took Lilou to the vet as she was limping.  It was a detached patella, which is common in little dogs.  The vet manipulated it and gave us some anti-inflammatory for her. He did not speak much English (less than my French) but that did not stop him, unbidden, to tell us which were the best wines of the region and where to get them.  One was “Vincent Dureuil-Janthal” in Rully so that was our next stop. 

Sadly the winemaker was out so there were no tastings.  OK we’ll order anyway, but they only take cash and we were out.  Did I mention there was no bank in Rully.  “Pas de problem”, the lady would deliver to our boat tomorrow in Chagny, the next town on our route, which did have a bank.  On the dot of two she arrives with our little box of wine and our cellar (the hatch in the Galley floor) is now full.

Of course Rully doesn’t have WiFi either so I don’t know when this will get sent.  It does have some very good wine though.